Thursday, December 29, 2005

Pandemonium

For my good friend, the extraordinarily talented Jason Pearson, I told him I would do something for his new Body Bags book, I bought the original book a few years back, before I met him (one of the few comics I have ever purchased) I thought then as I do now that "Father's Day" is one of the best comics ever, and I'm a very picky mofo! His characters are well crafted and consequential, Panda is sure an unforgettable design. I haven't shown these to him yet, I think I'll wait until I finish it, it ocurred to me to also make it a topic for my DRAW! Magazine column, I'm running out of ideas for these articles, we'll see.

I spend most of my time locked in the basement, sketching women while listening to music and wasting my time in cyberspace. I like long walks on the beach, latin american poetry, lime flavored Tostitos™, tongue burritos, Coronas with lime and salt, frozen Margaritas, kalamata olives, comics without text and textbooks without pictures.

Bobby and I are collaborating on an illustration for his new book: 'Ancient Japanese Sketches' Coming in December, in actuality, i...

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.

This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies.

An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

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While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at .

Oscar Wilde.

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and allows less room for lies.

Le Corbusier.

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral--immoral from the scientific point of view.""Why?""Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for.People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it.The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion--these are the two things that govern us. And yet I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream -- I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-- to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be."